Top Service News
Could we communicate better?
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Why the best business outcomes still depend on people talking to people.
By Philip King FCICM
I was privileged to represent Top Service at the 2025 CICM CreditFest events held in Birmingham, Manchester, London, and Leeds in recent months. They were great events and it was suggested I might share some of my thoughts with a wider audience through this magazine.
Let me start with the warning I gave the attendees at each event. There’s nothing here that you don’t already know. Rather, my intention is to make us think about how we communicate and consider if an alternative medium might make us more effective.
Chambers Dictionary defines communication as “to succeed in conveying one’s meaning to others”. That’s surely what we all set out to do when we start interacting with anybody so why does it sometimes go so spectacularly wrong?
The pitfalls of modern communication
I’m sure we’ve all misunderstood the intention of an email and reacted more stridently than we should, or we’ve sent something quite innocuous but the tone or wording we’ve used has resulted in it being misinterpreted and led to some backtracking and explanation. Might a conversation have worked better?
I recently shared a disastrous chatbot exchange which resulted in me being asked about facial or fingerprint recognition, and avoiding fees and charges, presumably because the bank hadn’t yet taught the bot about CIFAS markers being raised on an account! Eventually, a real conversation produced a satisfactory outcome.
Has the phone fallen silent?
Let’s talk about the phone. I wonder how Alexandra Graham Bell would have felt in 1876 if he’d known how little the device he invented would be used for its intended purpose 150 years on. A Uswitch survey in 2024 found that 25% of 18-34 year-olds never answer their phone. They want a text first or respond by text before having a conversation.
And whatever happened to simple telephone conversations. These days, I suggest a follow-up conversation to someone and they tell me they’ll send me a meeting invitation. I then sit in front of my computer, while they sit in front of their computer, as we look at each other for ten minutes and have the conversation. It can be useful but is it really always necessary?
Communication is a people thing
People buy from people, people pay people, people talk to people.
That’s why I have a bad taste in my mouth, before I’ve even started eating, when I’ve stood at the podium at a restaurant entrance being ignored by several staff members waltzing backwards and forwards until the appointed person comes across and greets me with a big smile. If only staff were trained to acknowledge customers when they see them waiting.
That’s why Mrs King didn’t buy a car from a particular dealership earlier this year. The salesman didn’t smile, didn’t make eye contact, didn’t seem interested, and just went through the motions without showing any real interest. The car was probably ideal but the interaction failed. People buy from people.
That’s why in 1978, at the start of my career in credit, I used to telephone a customer every Monday morning; we’d chat about the weather, football, weekend activities and all manner of things, but rarely mentioned money. If I called him on Monday, his weekly cheque would arrive on Wednesday. If I didn’t call him, it wouldn’t. People pay people.
Some conversations, and especially difficult ones, need more than just words. When we sit with someone, we pick up the unsaid. Body language, eye movement, gestures all help us to learn what’s going on beneath the surface and gain a better understanding. These are real people conversations: telephone, Zoom, email won’t cut the mustard.
When talking pays off
In my presentation I shared some examples of Top Service members who had benefitted from the organisation’s passion for conversations and sharing. Two were from member support activity and two from the debt collection team.
A member was concerned about an application for a £75,000 credit line from a potential customer. Her call into the team generated some further calls and the team identified that the application was fraudulent. As a result, the member – and several others – avoided being duped into supplying significant sums. Another member was nervous about an application for substantial credit. Her call into the team led to the unearthing of a number of other similar applications, alongside negative information. They, and other Top Service members, declined the facilities requested and were saved from substantial losses.
The close monitoring of a winding-up petition allowed the debt collection team to act when the petitioner was paid and the petition withdrawn. Quick action allowed the full six-figure sum to be collected in full within 11 days of instruction, with an additional £10,000 recovered for late payment interest and compensation charges.
The final example related to a member of the debt collection team noting a complete change in the tone of voice from a member of the debtor’s accounts team who moved from “the payment will be on the next run” to “I need to get authorisation to add to the next payment run” when it had failed to arrive. The collector spotted nuances in the voice of the other party. As a consequence, further digging revealed an as yet unadvertised winding-up petition. The Top Service member supported it and got paid.
All four examples pay tribute to the monitoring activity and speed of contact but, more importantly, they demonstrate the value of real and timely conversations that allowed quick decisions to be made. People working with people get positive results.
Try it and see the difference
My challenge to CreditFest attendees was to go away and think before one interaction each day. Will a text elicit a simple piece of information without adding to the recipient’s inbox? Is it quicker to wander to someone’s desk and ask them for an update and avoid the writing, responding to, and reading of emails? Could popping your head round the boss’s door and asking for a chat, or picking up the phone, work better than creating a long email chain providing the background and story, then answering questions that arise, before getting into the process of agreeing next steps?
Do that enough, it will become a habit, and we’ll be more effective. Why not give it a try.
Philip King FCICM is a non-executive director at Top Service Ltd